Add some sweetness to your day!

fruit

I found something amazing to do with some of the rhubarb my parents gifted to me! This cake was the perfect option. It is sweet, tart, lemony, moist, and has a beautiful splash of rhubarb right in the middle.

You know me by now, and when friends come over, I love to have some baked goods of some kind to offer them. If I don’t have anything prepared and friends come over to visit, I actually feel bad! I’ve built up a bit of a reputation in that I always have something delicious to munch on if we have visitors, and if I don’t live up to the name, there’s a little bit of guilt.

Well, a friend of mine came over last night for a dinner/movie date. We made dinner, I made dessert, and then we just caught up over a movie and just had some relaxation time. It was awesome. I was looking for a sweet treat for dessert, and I had a ton (and I mean a TON) of rhubarb in my freezer. Bless those parents of mine, they gave me so much!

I took to Pinterest, and found this eye-catching recipe. It looked amazing, used mostly pantry staples, and seemed to yield some delicious results. Boy, were my expectations lived up to! This cake is phenomenal. It’s got a little bit of tartness, some sweet, and a whole lot of AWESOME. If you have some time, and some rhubarb, I highly suggest you go make this cake!

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour a Bundt pan (or use some Miracle Cake Release. 1:1:1 ratio of flour, vegetable shortening, and oil.) and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, combine the butter, sugar, and lemon zest/juice and whip until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, combining after each addition. Add in the vanilla.

In a separate, medium mixing bowl, whisk together the flour (the first amount), baking powder, and salt.

Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture alternately with the buttermilk, ideally in 3 portions of each, until everything is fully incorporated.

Toss the rhubarb with the second measurement of flour to coat rhubarb evenly. Fold into the cake batter with a spatula.

Transfer cake batter into prepared pan, and smooth evenly with a spatula. Bake in preheated oven for 60-70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. (Mine took even longer, because my oven tends to run a bit cool.)

Remove the cake from the oven and let cool about 30 minutes in the pan, then remove from pan and let cool. If you glaze your cake while warm, the glaze will be a bit runnier, but you can still do this.

To make the glaze, in a small bowl whisk together the lemon juice, and 2 c. of the icing sugar. Add more icing sugar for a thicker glaze, depending on how much juice you got from the lemon. (I needed to add an extra half-cup or so.) Pour the glaze evenly over the cake.

When I think of pavlova, I think of my dear friend Rita. She was the first person who introduced me to the deliciousness of pavlova, and did so in such a beautiful way that it will always be cemented in my memory. A strawberry-kiwi pavlova with whipped cream. Amazing.

With the end of the school year comes goodbyes. These goodbyes are always hard, and one of these hard goodbyes was to my fellow staff at my school. Teaching contracts can be finicky things if you don’t have a permanent or continuing contract, which I didn’t this year. Hence, we had to say goodbye.

For our year-end staff get-together, we decided to have a potluck. Considering my luck with cheesecake (you might remember my Salted Caramel Pecan Cheesecake), both myself and my fellow staff members were all for me making dessert, and I wanted it to be something special. Paul was the genius that suggested pavlova, and I had everything in the fridge to make it, including cream to make whipped cream to top it. The only thing I didn’t have was the fruit.

I bought strawberries and peaches, and made simple fruit toppings to go with the pavlova, the lemon curd, and the whipped cream. The original recipe I found here. I have found that pavlova is not particularly difficult to make, but is time-consuming. Still, the results were worth it. I will let you know, pavlovas are traditionally Australian, and are meant to be crisp on the outside, and slightly gooey and marshmallow-esque on the inside. These ended up practically perfect.

I made a few changes to the recipe, none very special or important. Instead of making one large pavlova, I made a dozen small, individual-sized servings. This made it much easier to serve. Either way, I was very pleased with the results, so were my staff members, and so was Paul. It was a win-win-win situation. This is the perfect summer dessert; light, airy, fruity, sweet, tart. It’s got a bit of everything you need.

To make the pavlova, preheat the oven to 395°F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. If making one pavlova, trace a cheesecake ring on the parchment paper and flip so the traced circle is next to the baking tray. If making 12 portions, line two trays with parchment paper.

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg whites and cream of tartar on high until soft peaks form. Add sugar, one tablespoon at a time, not stopping the mixer until mixture is thick and glossy, and the sugar is completely incorporated. Add the cornstarch with the last tablespoon of sugar. Whip until sugar is completely dissolved. Once the sugar is dissolved, use a spatula to fold in the vanilla and vinegar.

Spoon the meringue into the ring on the prepared pan, or the twelve portions on the two pans. Make the centers slightly depressed and the edges slightly higher, so the meringue forms a shallow bowl shape.

Place the meringue into the oven, and IMMEDIATELY lower the oven to 210°F. Bake for 1½ – 2 hours, until the outside of the meringue feels dry and crisp. Turn off the oven, and leave the pavlova in the oven to cool completely.

For the lemon curd, in a large bowl over a pot of simmering water (or a double boiler), combine all curd ingredients, and whisk until combined. Whisking constantly, the mixture will thicken over the course of 15-20 minutes. When the mixture coats the back of a spoon, and does not run easily off, it is done.

Transfer to a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap until cool.

To make the fruit topping, combine all ingredients in a small saucepan until thickened and smooth. Fruit will cook down until tender and soft. Transfer to a bowl and cool.

To make the whipped cream, combine all ingredients in a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, and whip until thick and smooth.

To assemble, slice pavlova, or take a pavlova round and place on the serving dish. Top with lemon curd, the fruit topping, and whipped cream, and enjoy!

Welcome to Sugar and Spice, a blog documenting my cooking and baking adventures. I decided to start food blogging after months of reading the fabulous Annie of Annie’s Eats (http://www.annies-eats.com/). If you haven’t read her yet, START. She is both a wonderful baker and an inspiration! I have tried numerous recipes found on her website, and I have not been disappointed yet!

Anyways, I plan to post about all kinds of recipes that I would like to try – and trust me, my mental “To Bake” list is extremely long. So, to make a long story short, I will be posting about all of my various baking adventures, and posting pictures when I can. My fiance Paul is a chef, and as such, he inspires me to create mouth-watering desserts and baked goods of all kinds. We make quite a pair, him and I, and can certainly host one heck of a dinner party!

The first recipe I would like to share with you is not an exact recipe, per se. Paul and I were having a friend over for dinner last night, and since Paul decided on making a beautiful rotisserie chicken for dinner, it was only fitting that we had to have a dessert with it. A meal that decadent certainly deserved it! I dug around in the fridge, and came up with a couple of peaches that were right on the verge of being too soft to eat. I had some whole strawberries in my freezer as well, and poof! Strawberry-peach fruit crisp. Because it was a bit of an impromptu dessert, I will put the “recipe” that I used/threw together. Either way, we enjoyed it with vanilla and butterscotch ripple ice cream – divine, and not too shabby for a 10 minute dessert!

Unfortunately, it was so amazing that it was devoured before I could even take a picture – yes, that good. Simple, and delicious. Some of my favourite recipes are just that. So, without further adieu, here is my first recipe post! Enjoy! 🙂

Preheat oven to 350°F. Fill a loaf pan with fruit. Top fruit with cornstarch (use lesser amount if all fruit is fresh, use more if fruit is frozen. I had a mix of fresh and frozen fruit available, so I used a bit more cornstarch because I used more frozen fruit than fresh) and sugar.

Mix all crisp topping ingredients together, using approximately 3-4 tbsp. butter or margarine. Sprinkle over fruit until evenly covered (I love the crisp topping the best, so this makes a thicker layer. If you like more fruit layer than crisp layer, half crisp ingredients). Top crisp with remaining butter or margarine, spread out evenly in little dollops over the crisp layer.

Place in oven for 45-60 minutes, or until fruit is tender and soft when poked with a knife. Serve warm with ice cream.